GREENSBORO, N.C.—Humor me for a moment here. For the conclusion to Maryland’s time as a member of the ACC basketball world, I’m going to quote a few lines from the movie “Fletch.”

Seems fitting, considering the star of the movie, Chevy Chase, shares a name with a town that’s just about 15 minutes from the campus of the school that will join the Big Ten for the 2014-15 season. Anyway, there’s a scene where Fletch is trying to con some information from a doctor by pretending to know a guy named Ed.

Doctor: You know, it's a shame about Ed.Fletch: Oh, it was. Yeah, it was really a shame. To go so suddenly like that.Doctor: He was dying for years.Fletch: Sure, but the end was very, very sudden.Doctor: He was in intensive care for eight weeks.Fletch: Yeah, but I mean the very end, when he actually died. That was extremely sudden.

The end of Maryland’s time in the ACC has been coming for a long time, since the school made the announcement way back in November 2012. But the end, when the Terrapins actually ceased to exist as an ACC basketball entity, was extremely sudden.

The end came on a powerful two-handed slam dunk with 0.4 seconds left by Florida State big man Boris Bojanovsky. Maryland’s ensuing full-court heave was off the mark.

Instead of overtime, there was no more basketball for the Terps. Extremely sudden.

“We are never out of any fight,” said junior Dez Wells, who had 18 points. “Even when we took that last heave with .4 seconds, I still thought it was going to win the game. So when it didn’t go in, my heart dropped.”

The pain was still evident in Maryland’s postgame press conference.

Terps coach Mark Turgeon: “We knew what the ACC meant to our fans, and we just weren’t good enough to get the win today. But it wasn’t like we weren’t trying. We competed. We knew what it meant to our people. We’re going to miss it. It’s a great league, great coaches. We’re going to miss Greensboro. It was a great tournament, a great run.”

He paused, then continued: “But the good thing is, we’re going to another great league, great coaches, great tournament.”